from the steak-in-the-game dept

We've covered the trespasses of stupid criminals here before. Bank robbers who brag about their actions on YouTube, for instance. Or thieves on the lam uploading pictures containing their whereabouts to social media sites. It seems at times that these guys and gals are just trying to get caught. But that's certainly not always the case. Take the following story, which I have to believe is the internet-y-ist dumb criminal story yet.

They came up on the IRS radar after the couple met an informant at — no joke — YOLO Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. Maye told the informant his name was Troy and that he had stolen 700,000 identities, but the IRS could not yet crack the thief of identities' identity.

I have no idea what kind of food is served at YOLO Restaurant, but you kind of have to assume everything on the menu has a 50/50 shot of killing you, right? Maybe it's nothing but puffer fish and uncooked chicken with a side of ebola? Regardless, the IRS still wasn't able to get names on the two, so the informant was sent to have another meal with the two criminals, this time upping the classiness of the operation by going to a Morton's Steakhouse. While there, Maye provided the informant with a thumb drive that contained a bunch of identities, which were promptly turned over to the IRS. Investigators were then able to pull Maye's name from metadata on the drive. From there, the IRS did what any federal agency would do:

IRS Agent Louis Babino then headed to Google and located Maye’s Instagram page, which contained a profile photo of Maye. When shown the profile photo, the CW confirmed that Maye (seen at right) was the man with whom he dined at Morton’s.

Well, sure, Agent Babino, but how can you be really sure this was your guy?

A further review of Maye’s Instagram page, Babino noted, revealed “a photo of a steak and macaroni and cheese meal containing the caption ‘Morton’s.’” The image--uploaded on January 7 at 11:24 PM--“appears to coincide” with the CW’s meeting at Morton’s, added Babino.

Yup, this guy food-porned his way into being arrested. The Instagram photo is reportedly being entered into evidence in the case, so one hopes the juicy steak and the creamy mac and cheese was really, really worth all the trouble Maye is now in. Once again, if you're a criminal, online narcicism is probably something you'd do best to avoid.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Nuclear energy has been around for decades, but its safety and the safety of its radioactive waste have always been a political nightmare. Still, some researchers have been redesigning nuclear reactors to make them safer in many ways, but these newer designs have yet to be scaled up and used commercially. Maybe someday nuclear technology will be ubiquitous, but it'll likely take a long time before anyone is willing to embrace fission/fusion energy that doesn't come from the Sun.

from the oops dept

When we typically discuss companies coming to blows with content control (aka censorship), the stories tend to be about what would otherwise be obscure wrong-doings going viral on a national or international level. Major automakers concocting horrible advertising around suicide, for instance. Or multi-state bus companies learning that bathroom-ing on their customers isn't the best practice and catching the resulting backlash. But the practice of shining the light on yourself by being overly protective of your brand doesn't only happen at the macro level, it can have a local effect as well.

That's the lesson the Chicago Blackhawks are learning right this very minute. If you're not in Chicago, you probably haven't heard of Susannah Collins, who reports for Comcast Sports Net on the Blackhawks. In fact, if you know who she is at all, it's probably from this line of low-brow comedy videos that she produced on YouTube. While some of those videos are likely NSFW, there is nothing more racy in them than a bit of colorful language and suggestive talk. It's about as harmless as it gets. That is, of course, unless you're the Chicago Blackhawks who, for reasons that make absolutely zero sense, decided that those videos surfacing were cause to five-hole Collins' career and have her fired.

In a letter to the Vice President/General Manager of Comcast Sports Net Chicago, team chairman Rocky Wirtz demanded that reporter Susannah Collins be removed immediately, citing his awareness of comedy videos made years earlier that he found “incredibly offensive to a number of audiences, going well beyond professional athletes.”

He only learned of them after her innocent, unfortunate slip of the tongue last week brought them back to the fore, but it didn’t matter to Wirtz. Although they had been a fully disclosed non-issue upon her hiring, they became instant, retroactive reason for a swift dismissal.

The locals in Chicago were immediately upset over the firing. Certainly part of the reason for the animosity is the silliness of firing a reporter over sketch comedy videos she did on YouTube years ago. But, in true bad PR fashion, the real anger comes over the team's almost epic level of hypocrisy. You see, Wirtz cited the video's offensiveness as the reason for asking CSN (which is owned by several local Chicago teams, including the Blackhawks) to fire Collins. This, from the same team that has young women in tiny outfits shoveling up ice shavings between periods during games. This from a team that plays a sport in which fans will cheer on two grown men committing assault upon one another and then have the nerve to call it "part of the game."

But the real fun comes with the magnifying glass now being placed squarely on the team's official "ambassador," Bobby Hull. The article linked above is one of several that makes the point nicely.

Hull’s second wife, Joanne, whom he wed in 1960 and divorced in 1980, told an ESPN documentary in 2002 that she “took a real beating” at his hands. She described an incident during which Hull “threw me in the room, and just proceeded to knock the heck out of me. He took my shoe – with a steel heel – and proceeded to hit me in the head. I was covered with blood. And I can remember him holding me over the balcony, and I thought this is the end, I’m going.” She filed to end the marriage in 1970 after several more incidents, but they reconciled until Hull threatened her with a loaded shotgun in 1978. Their daughter, Michelle, also described his pattern of behavior to “Sports Century,” and she now works as an attorney specializing in domestic violence.

Should you think this was a one-time minor indiscretion of old-fashioned domestic abuse, Hull's second wife complained of similar treatment, Hull was later convicted for trying to punch a police officer, oh, and there was that one time he was all warm and fuzzy about freaking Hitler.

But, hey, I guess if there aren't any YouTube videos, it never happened, amirite? That is, until your unreasonableness turns the magnifying glass back on you and now you have an entire city calling for the head of your so-called "ambassador."

from the another-failure dept

Well, well. Some Prenda supporters (shockingly, they exist) in our comments have been arguing that Judge Otis Wright's order against Team Prenda is the sign of a rogue judge who will get overturned. Of course, similar actions underway in other district courts suggest otherwise. On top of that, it would appear that the 9th Circuit appeals court doesn't seem too concerned about Judge Wright's order on a first pass either. Late last week, Paul Hansmeier, one of the key Prenda players, asked the appeals court to delay the requirement to pay sanctions so that he could get a proper appeal together. Of course, perhaps rather than putting together 30 pages protesting about the sanctions, Hansmeier should have been putting together a real appeal (or, as it turns out, reading how to file a stay pending appeal). The filing is certainly amusing. He whines about the lack of due process and the possible "reputational injury" this might cause.

Morgan Pietz, the lawyer who has been opposing Prenda in this matter (and, obviously, who would receive the bulk of the attorney's fees ordered), filed a very short and to the point brief saying he was actually fine with a stay on the payment, pending appeal, of course, but he wanted Hansmeier to first post a bond to show that the payment could be made. He also noted that he would have been happy to make this concession to Hansmeier if Hansmeier had just contacted him to let him know he was filing the brief requesting the stay. That's actually kind of a key point. Judges generally want the various lawyers to talk to each other about what's happening before surprise briefs are filed like this -- and so pointing out that Hansmeier filed a 30 page brief asking for the stay without even letting Pietz know about it probably won't be looked at too kindly by the court. As Pietz points out, there is very real concern about whether or not Prenda will ever actually pay up if they don't put up a bond.

The need for a substantial bond to secure payment of costs and fees from
Prenda is not an idle request. Prenda Law, Inc. and its associated lawyers are an
organization that is rapidly falling apart. They have dismissed the vast majority of
their pending court cases across the country—cases which are their sole source of
revenue. Meanwhile, as the days go by, they are increasingly being hit with new
motions and orders to show cause for sanctions in various courts where they have
tried, with mixed success, to escape from the consequences of their actions. Further,
the lawyers and the entities involved here are likely the subject of potential criminal
investigations, including an IRS investigation, flowing from the court’s formal
referrals in the sanctions order below. In short, there may not be any solvent persons
around to collect from for much longer. Further, as will be detailed in briefing on
the merits, the lawyers’ interests in these cases (as well as their assets, one
presumes) are hidden behind a web of Nevis LLC’s and mysterious offshore trusts.
These are all complicated factual issues, with which the district court is already
familiar, which is why the district court should set the amount and terms of the bond

Pietz also points out that the "reputational harm" argument is silly, because everyone already knows about it.

Either way, the Appeals Court wasted little time in saying "no," mainly because Paul Hansmeier, who presents himself as an accomplished lawyer, appears not to know the first thing about filing a stay pending appeal.

Appellant's emergency motion for a stay of the district court’s May 6, 2013
sanctions order is denied without prejudice to renewal, if necessary, upon the filing
and disposition of such request in the district court. See Fed. R. App. P. 8(a)(1).

The rule in question says that if you're going to ask for such a stay, you have to first ask in the district court, rather than going straight to the appeals court. I would imagine that if Hansmeier had talked to Pietz, Pietz might have made that point as well. The deadline to pay up is tomorrow, though now it seems like Hansmeier may need to go ask Judge Wright for a stay in the matter if he wants to avoid having to pay up.

Of course, that's not the only trouble Hansmeier is facing from the 9th Circuit, who now appears rather aware of Hansmeier's reputation. You may recall that Hansmeier has also been involved in the sketchy practice of protesting class action settlements in the hopes of getting paid off to go away (in one letter he directly asked for $30,000 to go away). The appeal of one of those class action settlement battles is happening in this very same 9th Circuit, and Hansmeier had applied to be admitted in the 9th Circuit, where he cannot currently practice. As pointed out by Popehat, the court has taken notice of Judge Wright's order and told Hansmeier that he needs to clear up that before it will admit him. As Ken White noted:

In other words: no, Paul, you can't have admission to the Ninth Circuit until this is cleared up, and we won't let you represent a client before us in the interim.

from the another-accident-i-suppose dept

We see so many bogus DMCA takedowns, and we hear the big copyright holders insisting that it's just an accident each and every time -- and not to worry about the collateral damage and censorship it leads to. So it seems interesting that TorrentFreak has uncovered a series of bogus DMCA takedown notices to Google from four different giant Hollywood players -- Viacom, Paramount (owned by Viacom), Fox and Lionsgate -- that each ask it to remove links to Simon Klose's excellent documentary about The Pirate Bay TPB AFK. As TorrentFreak notes, Fox, via DtecNet (another total failure for the "six strikes" company), asked Google to remove a link to the movie on Mechodownload. Viacom asked for links to be removed to the movie on Mrworldpremiere and Rapidmovies. Lionsgate asked for to remove a link to the movie from The Pirate Bay of all places. Needless to say, all of these were authorized copies that the movie studios were seeking to have hidden.

Beyond the obvious concern about censoring a movie that shows, perhaps, a more sympathetic side of the TPB crew and their legal situation, these kinds of take downs serve another, more nefarious purpose: making sure there is less value for authorized works on these various sites. You hear it all the time from these companies that these sites are "all bad" and must be taken down. Having authorized content really looks bad, so it's nice for them that they can remove it by filing bogus DMCA claims with no real recourse. No wonder the MPAA is so vehement that it shouldn't need to consider fair use before sending bogus takedowns.

Yes, I'm sure these were all just more "accidents" but the impact is very real. For struggling filmmakers like Klose, having authorized copies of his film removed from Google has a serious impact. Copyright maximalists never seem concerned in the slightest about the collateral damage on the people who have actually learned to use these platforms well. They prefer to protect those who fight against new systems of distribution, while harming those who have succeeded in using them.

from the wow dept

Following the DOJ's brazen collection of info on AP reporter phone calls, we noted that it was not the first time the DOJ had been overly aggressive in going after reporters. Now, the Washington Post has another horrifying story, talking about the DOJ's investigation into a leak from the State Department to Fox News concerning classified info on North Korea. That investigation resulted in charges against Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department security adviser, but the investigation included heavy surveillance of James Rosen, the Fox News reporter. They obtained his phone records, security-badge data and email exchanges. In order to get all this, they claimed that Rosen wasn't just a reporter, but "an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator" in the crime itself. For doing basic reporting.

By now it should be abundantly clear that this has little to do with protecting national security, and everything to do with a war on investigative reporting about the federal government. Almost everything seems to be designed to threaten reporters, and to put the fear of the federal government into any whistle blower who might have information to pass on to a reporter. As people have pointed out, what Rosen did in this case is what any national security reporter does all the time. Others have pointed out that this shatters the basic concept that those who report on the news are protected by the First Amendment in doing so.

The Reyes affidavit all but eliminates the traditional distinction in classified leak investigations between sources, who are bound by a non-disclosure agreement, and reporters, who are protected by the First Amendment as long as they do not commit a crime. (There is no allegation that Mr. Rosen bribed, threatened or coerced anyone to gain the disclosure of restricted information.)

Mark Mazzetti, who covers national security for the New York Times — one of several leading investigative reporters I reached out to today — says he is experiencing a greater reluctance on the part of sources to talk to him.

"There's no question that this has a chilling effect," Mazzetti said. "People who have talked in the past are less willing to talk now. Everyone is worried about communication and how to communicate, and [asking if there] is there any method of communication that is not being monitored. It's got people on both sides — the reporter and source side — pretty concerned."

The end result, of course, is less ability to keep government abuses -- of which there appear to be many -- in check.

from the obscenity-vs.-free-speech dept

Obscenity law and the First Amendment tend to run into each other from time to time and the whole "I know it when I see it" concept makes things a bit arbitrary in the best of situations. Still, it's pretty standard for people to assume questions of obscenity revolve around imagery -- still or video -- rather than written works. Text and stories often explore taboo subjects, but still are seen to have legitimate literary value. Stories like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita involve somewhat horrifying concepts, but generally are still considered legitimate works of literature. In an age of easy creation for user-generated content, fan fiction and the like, it is not uncommon for things like slash fiction or related fan fiction to involve incredibly graphic scenes. Whether or not you see the appeal (and, personally, I don't get it at all), it's difficult to step aside and say that a particular form of storytelling should be judged as obscene and illegal. When it's purely fiction, and no one is being harmed or forced to participate and/or experience the work against their will, it is difficult to see what sort of harm has been caused. That is, perhaps, why it is "very rare" for there to be obscenity prosecutions for purely text-based works of fiction. Rare, but not unknown.

Just recently a federal district court in Georgia ruled that a series of stories written or edited by Frank McCoy were obscene, and thus he violated 18 USC 1462 in "transporting" obscene works. McCoy challenged whether or not the stories themselves could be considered obscene. As you might imagine, the subject matter is not mainstream. It is definitely on the extreme. Just reading the descriptions from the court case, which I will not repeat here, made me cringe and feel extremely uncomfortable. We're talking about extremely taboo subjects that are somewhat horrifying even just to read.

But, again, one could argue the same sorts of things about Lolita, or any number of other works. Should they, too, be deemed obscene? It seems like a dangerous slippery slope, especially when we're talking about purely written material. In this case, McCoy even had a distinguished English professor testify on his behalf that the works had "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

In his defense, Defendant relies upon the testimony of an expert witness, Professor Gary Richardson, in order to show the Court that his work has serious literary, political, and artistic value.*fn8 (Docs. 165-4 at 67-90, 165-5.) Professor Richardson is a Professor and Chairman of the Department of English at Mercer University. Professor Richardson previously received a Fulbright Scholarship and is a decorated academic in the field of English and literature. Professor Richardson concluded, in his expert opinion, that Defendant's body of work had literary, political, and artistic value. (Doc. 165-5 at 34-36.) Professor Richardson describes Defendant's stories as love stories, "basic romance plots," and "science fiction." (Doc. 165-4 at 80-81.) While Professor Richardson acknowledges that the predominant themes in Defendant's work involve "social mores" and "may be considered taboo," he testified that these are incidental to Defendant's greater efforts to "undertake an artistic rendering." (Id. at 84.) These themes, including graphic and explicit incestuous sexual abuse, rape, torture, and murder of prepubescent children and young girls, are according to Professor Richardson, a form of "reader entrapment" which reflects his intent to generate political interest. (Id. at 85.)

During his testimony, Professor Richardson also described Defendant's use of complex literary techniques within his body of work that develop the characters and further the plot line;*fn9 including, interpolated tale (the use of competing narratives) and complex resonances. (Id. at 87.) Professor Richardson, as an expert in literature, urges the Court to consider a deeper level and "close reading" of Defendant's work and examine the pornographic "visual gaze" and "central consciousness" are complex "variations on narrative point of view." (Id. at 88.) According to Professor Richardson, Defendant's work "reflects serious thought and serious artistry." (Doc. 165-5 at 4.) Among his reasons in support of his conclusion that Defendant's body of work contains literary value are, for example, Defendant's use of inversion of a biological reality in the story entitled "Rapesuzy." There, Professor Richardson points toward Defendant's use of science fiction-including the use of nanobots-as he explores the complex and timeless themes of the nature of love, the difference and relationship between love and sexuality, and how society is disposed to interact sexually with the rest of the world. (Id. at 6-7.) For these reasons, Professor Richardson concluded that "under a narrow definition" Defendant's work does have serious literary value and further that "from the standards of people who study literature, [Defendant's] stories would manifest serious literary value."*fn10 (Id. at 19, 22.)

But the judge disagreed, saying that "the Court can find no independent value within the work when considered as a whole" and thus judged the work obscene, finding McCoy guilty. In a separate ruling on the same day, the judge also rejected McCoy's attempt to have the case thrown out by arguing that the burden was on the government to prove that the works had no "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." In other words, there was a question of whether or not the First Amendment requires the assumption that the work has other value, and then it's the government's job to prove otherwise. But the court rejects that and says that the burden is on McCoy to prove that the work has such value -- though, as noted in the other decision, it then rejected the opinion of an expert who testified to that effect. Here, the judge said that the work deserves no assumption of protection:

Stated in other words, Defendant's short stories are not entitled to a heightened evidentiary standard, as a matter of federal constitutional law, because he believes them to be intrinsically literary, capable of joining the ranks of great classical erotic literature such as Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer,and Lolita.*fn5 See Bench Opinion at 9-12 (Discussion of why the Court concludes that Defendant's short stories, when taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value). Accordingly, though the Eleventh Circuit was not convinced that the musical composition Nasty could speak for itself, this Court has far less trouble declaring that Defendant's sexually explicit narratives, with their only tangentially related plots, can speak for themselves.

The subject matter of McCoy's stories is certainly extremely far from the mainstream, and (as noted) could make many people (including myself) somewhat squeamish. But, it still seems troubling that a court is determining that a written work is flat out illegal, when its creation harmed no one, and the work itself has not been forced upon anyone who did not want it. In fact, within the court's ruling, it notes that McCoy put warnings on the work such that those who might be similarly troubled by the contents would know not to read it:

This story contains very graphic violence against a very young child. If such things bother you (and they do me) I advise against reading this. The story is based upon a line that ran through my head one night, and I couldn't get it out [...basic description of the very taboo subjects included in the story... ] FINAL WARNING !!!! If you think the previous description is based; the actual story is much worse! I strongly advise you to skip this one.

The court, however, uses this "warning" as extra evidence that McCoy knew the work was obscene, and thus uses it against him. That seems kind of silly. After all, wouldn't the concern over obscenity be the impact the work might have on an unsuspecting or unexpecting reader? Yet here, such a reader would be clearly warned off.

I find this troubling on a variety of First Amendment grounds, especially as the standards used in the case could apply to all sorts of works both professionally published (books exploring the taboo are not exactly uncommon) and to a ton of things written by unsuspecting individuals on the internet. While you and I might not find such works to have value, it still seems quite worrying when a court can decide what kind of stories are legal or illegal.

from the how-many-degrees-of-separation? dept

The concepts of secondary liability seem to go right out the window (along with basic rationality) when it comes to certain people freaking out about copyright infringement. The latest is that Swedish prosecutors are apparently threatening the registrar that manages the .se domain with some form of charges because the Pirate Bay (briefly) ran on an .se domain.

“The legal system has not been able to shut down the service after the previous guilty verdict against TPB,” IIS Chief of Communications Maria Ekelund told TorrentFreak.

“Therefore the prosecutor has opened a new case against both the domain holders and .SE. The prosecutor is accusing .SE of assisting TPB who are assisting others to commit copyright infringement.”

[....] “In the eyes of the prosecutor, .SE’s catalogue function has become some form of accomplice to criminal activity, a perspective that is unique in Europe as far as I know,” says IIS CEO Danny Aerts.

That seems fairly ridiculous when you begin to think about the implications of it. This is so far removed from any actual infringement, it's incredible. This is the scorched earth approach to dealing with copyright infringement, with no care at all for any possible collateral damage in holding totally unrelated parties, who happened to be used by a service provider who, in turn, happened to be used by some people to possibly infringe, as liable for that infringement.

FBI agents always interview in pairs. One agent asks the questions, while the other writes up what is called a “form 302 report” based on his notes. The 302 report, which the interviewee does not normally see, becomes the official record of the exchange; any interviewee who contests its accuracy risks prosecution for lying to a federal official, a felony. And here is the key problem that throws the accuracy of all such statements and reports into doubt: FBI agents almost never electronically record their interrogations; to do so would be against written policy.

Without a recording to compare the transcript to, we are expected to trust the FBI's version of the interrogation. If we can't trust it, we are left to draw one of the following conclusions.

1. The transcript is completely false. 2. The transcript is heavily editorialized. 3. The transcript interprets certain statements, but is otherwise accurate. 4. The transcript is completely accurate.

Of all of these choices, number 4 seem least likely. In fact, one wonders why the FBI bothers interviewing anyone when it could simply put two agents in a room and allow them to bang out a confession on behalf of the accused.

If a suspect claims the transcription is erroneous, it's his word against theirs. His words, of course, disappeared into the ether as soon as they were spoken. The FBI's version lives on, printed on paper.

We don't need to ask "why" this is a problem. There are rhetorical questions and then there are stupid questions, the sort helpful teachers and guidance counselors continue to pretend don't exist. A better question is, "Why hasn't this been changed?" Silverglate notes this policy is an updated version of a 1990's policy, crafted in 2006, long long long long after recording devices were ubiquitous. The excuse that this policy was "logistically necessary" because of technological limitations was ridiculous in 1990, much less 16 years later.

This is a problem. More specifically, this is Robel Phillipos' problem.

Phillipos is a 19-year-old Cambridge resident, former UMass Dartmouth student, and friend of alleged Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He faces charges of making materially false statements during a series of interviews with FBI agents. If convicted, he could get up to eight years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.

Q: We found files on your computer showing that you went to a website with instructions on how to make a bomb, so we know you did it. When did you first go to the bomb website?

A: I surf the web constantly and go through, like, a million pages. I have no idea what pages I searched or when. How could I possibly know?

Notated in 302: D cannot recall when he first went to bomb website. Went "constantly."

Slick, isn't it? And when someone points out a misquote, the accusation is turned on them just as easily. "Are you lying now or were you lying earlier?"

This is nasty business but it gets even nastier. Beyond the hilarious claim that tech simply hasn't advanced enough since 1990 to allow reliable voice recording, there's a much darker rationale guiding this ridiculous (and dangerous) policy.

The more honest — and more terrifying — justification for non-recording given in the memo reads as follows: “. . . perfectly lawful and acceptable interviewing techniques do not always come across in recorded fashion to lay persons as proper means of obtaining information from defendants. Initial resistance may be interpreted as involuntariness and misleading a defendant as to the quality of the evidence against him may appear to be unfair deceit.” Translated from bureaucratese: When viewed in the light of day, recorded witness statements could appear to a reasonable jury of laypersons to have been coercively or misleadingly obtained.

Sometimes the "reasonable jury" would be right -- the statement has been "coercively or misleadingly obtained." Other times, it may not be as clear-cut. But in a day and age where recording interviews and interrogations is the expectation, the FBI continues to play by its own (convenient) rules. And if the person being interrogated doesn't like it, he can expect additional charges to brought. This puts the alleged criminal in the unenviable position of having "anything he says" twisted, rewritten and heavily paraphrased before being used against him.

Silverglate cautions to withhold judgement on Phillipos until all the facts are in. But as long as the FBI continues to use this "recording" technique, don't grant its statements any credibility. They have none.

from the wtf? dept

As you may recall, we've recently written about the MPAA's protests against a treaty for the blind, as well as a similar protest from the Intellectual Property Owners Association (on that front, we heard that many members of that group never saw that letter before it was sent out, and were not happy about it). Now there's another group sending a letter, and it's equally as ridiculous. Business Europe, which appears to have a lot of non-European companies as members (interesting, that), has written a ridiculous letter with little basis in fact, arguing that this treaty for the blind would be "casting aside" the "international copyright infrastructure."

Of course, it does no such thing. All it does is provide extremely limited situations in which copyright restrictions would be limited for the sake of making it easier for vision-impaired people to access works. They also claim that it relies on "hasty conclusions" which is flat out laughable, since the treaty has been under discussion for almost three decades, but has been regularly blocked by organizations like those mentioned above. Business Europe's real complaint seems to be that it just doesn't like the people who like this treaty.

... it is strongly supported by the same group of NGOs and advanced emerging economy countries that pursue a general IPR-weakening agenda at WIPO and other international forums.

Got that? Those who argue that providing more rights to the public support this very minor place where more rights would be provided to the vision-impaired public, and we can't have that. No, no. They also, rather bizarrely, claim that some countries who are likely to sign on to this treaty "do not provide any copyright protection whatsoever." Jamie Love at KEI asks exactly which countries they're talking about. The statement from Business Europe is nothing but fear mongering. If a country doesn't provide any copyright protection at all, then why would it even care about a treaty whose focus is providing exceptions to copyright?

The level of freakout from these giant companies over helping the blind is really quite incredible.

from the the-light-side-of-the-force dept

You've heard the rumblings before. Free doesn't work. Or perhaps it was that free doesn't work for big time franchises. More specifically for video games, you may have heard that when a game goes from paid to free it's a sign that it's a dead game. The mantra persists, despite examples like The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons showing the exact opposite can be true, where going free results in a significant uptick in revenue. There is still this fear in the hearts of game producers and, as we all know, fear leads to doubt, doubt leads to anger, and anger leads to the dark side of gaming.

Yet redemption can be had, if there is still good inside a game. The latest example of this is Star Wars: The Old Republic, an MMO that was once fee-based but is now free and has realized massive revenue returns as a result. EA Labels Emperor Frank Gibeau took time away from misunderstanding what DRM is to remark on the success of the new model.

“Since it was induced in November, we’ve added more than 1.7 million new players on the free model to the service,” said Electronic Arts president of labels Frank Gibeau. “And the number of subscriptions has stabilized at just under half a million.”

“The really interesting thing that’s happening inside the service right now is monthly average revenue for the game has more than doubled since we introduced the free-to-play option. And as we look forward, we’re going to continually invest in new content for the service and for players every six weeks or so.”

Oh, look, you give your customers what they want at the prices they want it, build up a massive fan-base, and a years-old game still ends up putting money in EA's pockets. It's a shame they haven't tried a similar strategy with other EA games like SimCity, instead choosing to lock the game up tighter than Han Solo trapped in carbonite with an always-online requirement nobody wants.

Still, it's nice to see that EA isn't above experimenting with better gaming business models, even if they did so in this case with an older game in which they had very little to lose. Here's hoping the company translates this success into a wider philosophy.

from the right-to-know dept

A recurrent theme here on Techdirt is the lack of transparency when international agreements and treaties are being drawn up. That's increasingly recognized not just as problematic, but simply unacceptable in an age when the Internet makes it easy to provide both access to draft documents and a way for the public to offer comments on them.

As the detailed history of this case (pdf) explains, the European Commission was apparently quite happy to pass on copies of certain documents to industry associations, but when Corporate Europe Observatory asked for the same, they only received censored versions. The lawsuit accuses the European Commission of discriminating in favor of corporate lobby groups and of violating the EU's transparency rules. As the Corporate Europe Observatory asks:

how can documents that the Commission has already shared with the business community at large suddenly become confidential and a threat to the EU's international relations when a public interest group asks for their disclosure? This is the core question raised by the lawsuit.

And it points out:

What is at stake in the lawsuit is whether the Commission can continue its habit of granting big business privileged access to its trade policy-making process by sharing information that is withheld from the public. This practice not only hampers well-informed and meaningful public participation in EU trade policy-making, it also leads to a trade policy that, while catering for big business needs, is harmful to people and the environment in the EU and the world.

The European court will be handing down its verdict on 7 June. If the judges side with transparency, it could have a major impact on how the imminent TAFTA/TTIP negotiations between the EU and US are conducted. If they don't, then the battle for the public's right to know what is being agreed in its name will doubtlessly continue.